Lot # 014
JACK HAMILTON BUSH
ARCA CGP CSGA CSPWC OSA P11 1909 - 1977 Canadian

Zip #1
acrylic polymer on canvas,
on verso signed, titled, dated 1968 and inscribed "Toronto"
26 x 21 in,  66 x 53.3 cm

Provenance:
Beaux-arts Internationale, Toronto
Private Collection, Toronto

Literature:
Roald Nasgaard, Abstract Painting in Canada, 2007, page 123

If a painting had a voice, could sing out a jazz riff and shout its own name, Zip #1 would be heard loud and clear. One can imagine it in the artist's studio in 1968, its soprano tones rising above the deeper baritones of Jack Bush's larger canvases. As a colourist, Bush often made surprising juxtapositions in placing one rich hue next to another. His bands of thinly-applied pigment can fool the eye into believing that the artist created a rigid line between one colour and another; but on closer examination, one sees the intended imprecision of that line, a near-fuzziness that subtly adds to the life force of the work and retains the artist's graphic hand.
Roald Nasgaard, in praising Bush's paintings of 1968, writes, "If there are few tensions in depth and if the vertical divisions are strictly parallel to the frame, then the horizontal bands behave less well. They may be only triflingly askew, but they tease the mind's expectation of order as deliciously and with as wry a sense of humour."
Remembered by his friends and fellow artists as a talented pianist and avid jazz fan, perhaps this work was Bush's response to a joyful sound - and reflects the vitality he gained from listening to it. In 1968, the year that this superb work was painted, Bush was at the peak of his career and had gained international recognition as one of North America's foremost Colour Field painters.

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Lot # 020
JACK HAMILTON BUSH
ARCA CGP CSGA CSPWC OSA P11 1909 - 1977 Canadian

Pleasant Day
gouache and watercolour on paper,
signed and dated 1953 and on verso signed, titled on the Grace Borgenicht Gallery and Salander-O'Reilly Galleries labels, dated and inscribed "Lake of Bays / Toronto"
22 3/4 x 31 3/8 in,  57.8 x 79.7 cm

Provenance:
Grace Borgenicht Gallery, New York
Salander-O'Reilly Galleries, New York
Collection of William Mac Chambers, New York
Collection of David and Annette Raddock, Colorado

In 1952, Jack Bush took part in the Canadian Abstract Exhibition organised by Alexandra Luke at the Adelaide House in Oshawa. By the early 1950s, artists in Toronto had recognised that if abstraction were to earn credibility amongst critics and collectors, they would have to organise and promote the movement themselves. Over the next two years, Bush, Luke and several others began to hold exhibitions together, and in February of 1954, Painters Eleven held their first group show at the Roberts Gallery. By this time, Bush had released himself fully to abstraction, particularly to the style of New York abstraction which so attracted him.
Although several of his watercolours painted in the same year remain anchored in realism, for Bush, the resolution of a formal, expressionistic language was paramount, and in Pleasant Day he has undeniably freed himself from literal representation. During his career, Bush emerged as one of Canada's most recognisable and iconic artists both at home and abroad. Like so many of his memorable works, Pleasant Day remains a powerful emblem of an enduring and sophisticated oeuvre.

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Lot # 021
JACK HAMILTON BUSH
ARCA CGP CSGA CSPWC OSA P11 1909 - 1977 Canadian

November #20 (Oscar's Death)
gouache and watercolour on paper laid down on artist board,
signed and dated Nov. 27/1956 and on verso titled and dated
9 1/2 x 12 1/2 in,  24.1 x 31.7 cm

Provenance:
Estate of Jack Bush
Grace Borgenicht Gallery, New York
Collection of David and Annette Raddock, Colorado

It was during a Toronto visit to Jack Bush's studio in the 1950s that American art critic Clement Greenberg recognized the power behind Bush's works on paper. Greenberg was immediately impressed with the directness and simplicity of his watercolours and gouaches. Bush's works on paper clearly demonstrated his mastery of colour, depth and dexterity. It was also Greenberg who encouraged Bush to translate the qualities of his works on paper to his canvases. During this period, one can clearly see the influence of Colour Field painting in New York on Bush's work, and the beginnings of his own interpretation of this movement. Bush's works on paper from this time rival those of his American contemporaries Helen Frankenthaler and Robert Motherwell.
November #20 (Oscar's Death) was painted at the time of the sudden death of Oscar Cahén, a fellow member of Painters Eleven, as Bush's personal tribute to a seminal artist, colleague and friend. For both Cahén and Bush, works on paper were critical preliminary notations for their canvases. It was said among members of Painters Eleven that eventually Cahén's influence would affect all of them, and this proved to be true with Bush.

Sold For: $9,945.00 CAD
Estimate: $10,000 ~ $15,000 CAD

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Lot # 031
JACK HAMILTON BUSH
ARCA CGP CSGA CSPWC OSA P11 1909 - 1977 Canadian

Transition
oil on board,
signed and dated 1948 and on verso titled on a label
16 x 22 3/4 in,  40.6 x 57.8 cm

Provenance:
Private Collection, Vancouver

Literature:
Karen Wilkin, Jack Bush, 1984, page 16

By the end of World War II in 1945, it was evident that Jack Bush was becoming one of the most accomplished painters in Canada. Bush's paintings by the mid to late1940s were displaying specific traits and characteristics that would stay with his work throughout his career. As exemplified in Transition, Bush's growing affinity for pinks and blues highlighted with white became apparent in the 1940s, in addition to downward-sweeping diagonals that gave the sensation of movement.
By 1947, Bush had abandoned his figurative paintings in order to focus on painting emotive abstracted works. In 1949, Bush had a solo exhibition at the Gavin Henderson Gallery in Toronto, titled New Paintings by Jack H. Bush. Critics were impressed with the development and progression in his work. Pearl McCarthy, in her review of the exhibition in the Globe and Mail, wrote, "While the new paintings tend toward the abstract, the canyons and mysterious figures will thrill even those usually afraid of the abstract."

Sold For: $19,890.00 CAD
Estimate: $10,000 ~ $15,000 CAD

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